Egypt - What to Do?

It is certainly easier to criticize the president and the administration than to come up with clear workable solutions to the problem of Egypt. Still there are some things which can be clearly determined

    1. Part of the concern is what will happen to our energy costs and national security?
    2. Part of the problem is what will happen to Israel?
    3. Part is what will happen to the people in Egypt?
    4. Last is what will happen in the region, which in part applies to #1?

I put them in this order because I felt this was probably the order of most importance. It may be debated about 2 and 3, but I still think the order is correct.

To the first point, all I can say is shame on our government and administration. They have put the needs of snail darters and rodents above the needs of the people of the nation. They refuse to drill the oil we have and continue to make us dependent on the Middle East for our supply when we could easily be drilling a great deal of our own if the environmental Nazis would just get out of the way.

We have allowed our leaders to defy the will of the people with their runaway ecology policies whose real design is not a genuine concern for some animal but rather a concern for a way to exercise more power over the people without admitting it is about other things.

If our leaders were as concerned about our national security as they ought to be they would have been making sure for a very long time now that we had enough energy. It is clear in this industrial age that energy is paramount to the security of any nation. Without energy your armies will go nowhere, your factories will produce nothing. But, rather than make it a point that we have all the cheap energy we can get by producing more coal, natural gas, nuclear energy, and the like, we have a government determined to find the most expensive fuels with the least promise and then even deny us the use of the forms of energy we already have.

Would this make sense to anyone but a politician or an ecology nut? Yet this is the place we find ourselves in. We have a federal government that hates the military, when that is one of their primary responsibilities. The federal government was not set up to decide what food we eat, or whether we can hate someone or not; it was not set up to determine where we could build and where we couldn't; it was not set up to determine what type of trees we could put on our property; it was not set up to determine what should be considered obese and what could be done about it. The federal government was set up as an arbitrator between the states, for the defense of the nation, and for such things as treaties and international tariffs.

It has not been satisfied with letting the states govern themselves. It has also abrogated its responsibility in the other areas. We have incompetents in very high positions in our government. Some might even call them subversive, but I know many just don't want to think we could have such people in those positions. Consider that even after a judge decided that the moratorium on drilling in the gulf was wrong and overturned it how our president and the czars he chose simply ignored it. Consider how there has only been one new drilling permit issued since the spill in the gulf. Consider how our president and administration is again ignoring the law and the judges they disagree with by simply continuing to implement a health care plan that has now been deemed unconstitutional. Those we have in power are contemptuous and ignorant of the constitution. If anything they view it as an inconvenience.

I wonder can anyone name one thing this administration has done that has proven to be for the good and safety of the nation regarding our allies, and international politics? It recently came out that Obama gave secret information to the Russians (not an ally by any means) on the nuclear program of England, definitely one of our oldest and best allies. Is there any investigation? Is there any genuine concern about how this will affect such a good alliance for the sake of nearly nonexistent concessions on the part of Russia?

In answer to the second point, "What will happen to Israel?" It does not seem to be the least concern to our president or this administration what will happen to Israel. Again, they have been one of our 2 best allies for the last 50 years, and Obama seems to never miss an opportunity to oppose them and stand on the side of the terrorists. It almost doesn't matter who opposes them, Obama is determined to side with anyone except Israel. So, can we say that Obama has the concern of another of our friends and our only real ally in the Middle East in mind?

We need to find some way to make it very clear to Egypt and the surrounding nations that we will stand by Israel and the surrounding nations no matter what. We need to further make it plain that we will support them militarily and that we are done dealing with Hamas, and the Palestinians since they have done nothing to bargain in good faith. At this point they feel as supported or even more so than Israel. Should this really be the case?

It is of course a dangerous thing to make threats if you either can't carry them out or if you don't intend to. We have a president that is very big on words but they are the words of deception. This of course makes him an unknown, which though it can have its advantages in international relations can also have a downside because even your allies don't know what to expect from you.

One of the things that is a prerequisite for international politics or any other politics for that matter is the ability to bring people together. We need to understand that Obama's complete history and life practice has been about dividing people and driving wedges between them. He has seen this method to accomplish his ends. Though this method works when you're dealing from a position of weakness it does not work when you are dealing from a position of strength. At this point all it does is turn people against you and make it harder to accomplish your ends.

It is clear if nothing else that we must declare our allegiance to Israel and stand behind that in every action we take, even when we disagree with them. We must also make it very clear that even when we disagree with them that we will stand with them. In the case of Obama he seems to make it very apparent that if they don't do exactly what he says then he will set himself against them. This is not the behavior of a president or a diplomat; it is the behavior of a community organizer. It is give me what I want or I will make your life so miserable that you'll wish you had. What really is the difference between this and what terrorists do?

What happens to the people in Egypt?

To this question the first thing we ought to address is that Egypt ought to be at least as concerned about its own people as we are. It is not our job to be the policemen of the world. Nor is it our job to make sure that all other nations do what we think is in their best interest. Doing that means that we are really playing the role of rulers of the world and this is not something our founding fathers ever intended. What they intended was actually that we should stay out of world politics as much as possible and only get involved where our friends and allies were concerned. If nations want to be concerned allies well and good, but if not then we have nothing to do with them and make it clear that they better not do anything to us either. More and more it seems people are not afraid of what we might do.

Our change toward a politically correct view of war where we should never really go after a nation or country with destruction in mind. It is as though we have unlearned 4,000 years worth of war. War is of course messy. It is not meant to be surgical. It was not meant to be painless and only aimed at what individuals had already done something wrong. It has always been aimed at nations. The end result should be that the nation attacked stops fighting against you and submits. The Muslims certainly recognize this. The word Islam means submission. If we forget this is one of the primary aims of their religion we are bound to suffer grave consequences.

We do not have enough information about the parties involved to make any intelligent decision or give advice that might actually benefit them. They should no more expect that we will interject into their government than we would wanting another nation telling us which president or leader we should pick. We would most certainly view this as very offensive and I can't see how they would feel any other way about it either.

It is for that reason that I say I don't believe we should be pressing our views on Egypt unless we would expect them to do the same if the roles were reversed.

What of Stability in the Region?

I cannot see how this would be an issue if we were a little more concerned with taking care of our own issues. If we were more concerned about getting our own oil from our own vast resources we would be far better off. It is certainly a fact that we cannot behave as though we have our own resources. Our government has taken such a position against the people to prevent us from handling our own energy needs. This being the case we do have to be concerned about what may happen in the region. If we lose control at this point we may well find that we are in a lot of trouble regarding our energy needs.

It is possible that we may be able to make up those energy needs in a fairly short period of time were a crisis to present itself, but I fear with the president and congress we have right now even a crisis wouldn't be enough to fix the issue. It is certain that nuclear plants are not going to get built any time soon. Even though in most cases there are only a handful of people opposed to them, the situation is such that they manage to mobilize themselves and make it appear that there is a great deal more opposition to them than would be expected. It is also quite clear that the building of nuclear power plants takes years. We might be able to bring more oil and coal to market in a relatively short period of time, but beyond that I'm not sure we'll be able to make up for the difference of what we get from the Middle East.

For this reason stability in the Middle East or for that matter almost any region is desirable. About the only time you look for instability is when you plan on weakening an opponent. So if the desire of our president is to weaken someone then instability would definitely be desirable; otherwise I cannot think of a reason we should seek to see such a thing happen in this region of the world at this time.

It further does not add to the stability of the region when we show that we are not really going to stand behind our allies. It makes you wonder if anyone in our administration or upper levels of government understand anything at all about these situations? Where are our ambassadors? What are they doing? Why is there no input from them when they have been there all this time and certainly must recognize better than those who are far off what is happening.

We cannot find out anything reliable from the media at this point. Most of them are too busy trying to cover for the president and others are too enamored with the whole rioting and rebellion thing. They are like ravens fascinated with the latest shiny object.

It is a shame that we need to petition our media as much or more to do their jobs. It is bad enough that we should have to do that with our leaders, but to have to do it with the media when their job is to watch the government and yet they cannot be bothered to do anything but defend the president instead of doing their job and reporting on the president